Key takeaways
- Blizzard is ditching Season of Discovery's experimental rune system for Forever, prioritizing classic simplicity and established class identity.
- The game features fixed raid tiers of 10, 20, and 40 players—no flex raiding—ensuring smaller guilds never outgrow their preferred size.
- Forever commits to a permanent level 60 cap with horizontal content expansion, guaranteeing player investment won't expire like it does on retail.
In a recent interview, World of Warcraft: Forever‘s lead designers opened the door on several major design decisions shaping the game. During separate conversations, designer Jonathan Jones and producer John Nuthals addressed everything from class flexibility to raid structure, revealing how closely Forever will stick to Classic WoW’s foundational design.
The End of Class Flexibility
No Rune System for Off-Spec Roles
Season of Discovery generated significant interest in the World of Warcraft community partly because of its rune system, which allowed unconventional class-role combinations: shamans tanking, mages healing. Leaked abilities such as Spirit Weapons and Molten Blast sparked speculation that Forever might embrace similar experimentation. However, when the Forever playtest went live, the reworked shaman skill tree lacked these innovations entirely, remaining closer to Classic while still distinct from it.
When asked directly about the absence of runes in Forever, Jones responded to concerns about the departure from Season of Discovery’s design philosophy. “There’s a lot of fun and exciting things in Season of Discovery, but even the design choices that we made in SoD, when we measure them against what our pillars are for WoW Forever, they don’t make sense in terms of the simplicity or the identity that we want for some classes to have,” he explained. The remark essentially signals that unconventional roles like viable shaman tanks will not reappear. Still, the design team left room for reconsideration, with Jones noting that the team wants to “keep the conversation open with players” and inviting those passionate about class flexibility to voice their perspectives.
A Return to Classic Simplicity
The foundation of Forever’s approach to class design stems from “a baseline of simplicity that’s more adjacent to the Classic game than Season of Discovery was,” according to Jones. This commitment to Classical structure marks a deliberate step backward from the experimental nature of Season of Discovery, prioritizing the identity each class established decades ago. Rather than adding new tools and cross-role abilities, the team is working to preserve what made class identity matter in the original game.
Raid Structure Without Flex Raiding
Fixed Tiers: 10, 20, and 40 Players
One of the major concerns players raised about Forever centered on the absence of flex raiding, where raid difficulty and composition adapt to group size. In Season of Discovery, some raid groups disbanded entirely when raid requirements escalated from 10 players to 25, creating friction for smaller communities. Nuthals confirmed that flex raiding will not exist in Forever, but offered a structured alternative: every raid tier will feature a minimum 10-player option and a 20-player option, with some tiers also including a 40-player raid.
Permanent Support for Smaller Guilds
“If you’re a 10-man group and you don’t have interest in doing 20-man content, that is perfectly fine,” Jones said, emphasizing that Forever intends to offer genuine progression through 10-player raids alone. He added that the design team will ensure “there is challenge and rewards in the 10-player content and there will always be a 10-player raid for groups every single tier forever.” This commitment addresses the scaling problem that disrupted communities in Season of Discovery by guaranteeing that smaller guilds need not worry about outgrowing their preferred raid size. The fixed-size tier approach trades the flexibility of dynamic difficulty for predictability and long-term stability.
Group Finding and Meeting Stones
A New Looking for Group System
Meeting Stones still dot the landscape in Forever, stationed at dungeon entrances as they were in Classic WoW. However, their functionality has evolved. They no longer offer the convenience of instant summoning; instead, they serve as anchors for a new Looking for Group system built into the game client. This system allows players to list the activities they wish to undertake—specific dungeons, raid tiers, or world events—and discover other players with matching goals, streamlining the process of assembly without eliminating travel time.
Travel Remains a Game Cost
The removal of cross-server summons means that even after finding group members through the new system, players must still travel across the world to meet one another unless a warlock in the party can provide the teleportation. This design choice reinforces the value of physical space in the game world, preventing the modern convenience tools from completely superseding Classic’s sense of geography and encounter cost.
Add-Ons and Character Investment
Automation Add-Ons Will Be Disabled
While Blizzard’s lead designers did not detail the complete add-on policy, Nuthals revealed that Forever will implement what he called “in-game or in-combat add-on disarmament,” disabling add-ons that perform programmatic calculations or automated actions. This restriction targets add-ons designed to automate marking systems, raid communications, or other computational tasks that would require player skill or coordination to perform manually. The policy represents a deliberate attempt to preserve player agency in tactical moments.
Effort Still Matters for Rewards
Addressing concerns that new players might receive rewards without corresponding investment, Jones discussed mount acquisition in detail. The team “made design adjustments to make sure that effort is still required to obtain things like your mount.” Rather than offering free training upon reaching level 40, the gold cost resides in the training itself, not the mount. “People still have to, if you see someone on a mount, it is reflective that they have spent time and effort into the game,” Jones explained, linking visible progression to tangible investment.
PvP Progression and Rewards
A Ranking System Up to Rank 14
Forever brings structured PvP progression through battlegrounds and world combat. Players gain honor for completing PvP-related content, feeding into a ranking system where they can advance to rank 14 within a single season or patch cycle. Rewards include cosmetic items and PvP-specific armor that provides statistical bonuses, ensuring that PvP players experience meaningful progression tied to competitive engagement rather than purely cosmetic recognition.
New and Classic Battlegrounds
The game will introduce new battlegrounds like Darkspear Islands alongside the classic battlegrounds from vanilla WoW, offering variety without abandoning the established competitive landscape. Jones emphasized that the design team wants PvP players to “feel rewarded and feel like that there’s a real progression track for them,” positioning battleground participation as a core progression path rather than an optional side activity.
The Philosophy Behind “Forever”
A Permanent Investment for Characters
When asked what distinguishes the title “Forever” from retail World of Warcraft, Jones articulated the core promise: permanence. “When you look at how people have played Classic versions of our game before, there’s always the afterthought of, what happens to my character? Why am I investing time into this character when I know that this experience will end?” he said. Classic servers cycle through expansions or close entirely, leaving characters stranded. Forever commits to a level 60 cap, continuous content expansion, and an explicit guarantee that player investment will never expire.
Horizontal Content for a Level 60 Cap
The game will never advance its level ceiling, meaning that characters created at launch remain viable throughout Forever’s lifetime. Instead of vertical progression through new level caps, Blizzard plans to build content horizontally: through new zones, dungeons, raids, and systems designed for level 60 characters. The legacy system will encourage players to create multiple characters, offering fresh progression paths without making existing characters obsolete. In Jones’s words, “The ‘forever’ is really a promise of this is a safe place to make a character where everything that you invest your time in will matter forever.”
What Stays Behind
Cross-realm play, which merged distant servers to maintain population, will not carry over from retail to Forever, keeping the game world fragmented by realm as it existed in Classic. Additionally, Skyborne elves remain behind a $30 paywall, though the designers declined to comment on monetization policies or potential future paywall content, citing their roles as game designers rather than business decision-makers.
Frequently Asked Questions
Will World of Warcraft Forever have the rune system from Season of Discovery?
No. Lead designers stated they're prioritizing simplicity closer to Classic WoW. Design choices from Season of Discovery don't make sense for the game's intended class identity and simplicity.
What raid options are available for small guild groups in Forever?
Every raid tier includes at minimum a 10-player raid and a 20-player raid, with some tiers also offering 40-player raids. The game has no flex raiding system.
Why is World of Warcraft Forever called that?
It's Blizzard's promise that characters and player investment never expire. The game maintains a level 60 cap with continuous horizontal content, and characters remain viable forever—unlike Classic servers which progress through expansions.
